


the leaves are dying

by Morning66



Category: Boy Meets World
Genre: Growing Up, M/M, Sad
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-08
Updated: 2021-02-08
Packaged: 2021-03-13 11:28:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,145
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29277720
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Morning66/pseuds/Morning66
Summary: When they were eight years old, Cory promised Shawn Vermont and changing leaves with stars in his eyes and confidence in his voice.
Relationships: Shawn Hunter/Cory Matthews
Comments: 4
Kudos: 15





	the leaves are dying

**Author's Note:**

> Whelp, it's another BMW fic! Yay!!! =D

_ "And you also told me that if I graduated high school, you'd take me to Vermont. To watch the leaves change." - Shawn Hunter _   
  
***   
  
Shawn is eight years old and still short enough to stand up in the tree house. Not for much longer, he doesn't think, though. His mom says he really is growing like a mangy weed, whatever that means. He's doing it now, standing up and reaching out the window and plucking leaves off of the tree.   
  
"Be careful!" Cory says, needlessly clutching Shawn's feet. "You might fall and die and then I'd have to die too because you're my best friend."   
  
Shawn grabs a large bunch of leaves and pulls. "I'm not gonna fall, Cor."   
  
He isn't. He climbed the big old tree by the trailer park entrance, the knobby one that got struck by lightning last summer. He made it all the way to the top just to see if he could and then came down when he got tired of staring at the tarp his neighbors put over their leaking trailer to keep out the water.   
  
If he didn't fall then, he's never going to fall.    
  
When he's finally gotten a sufficient amount of clumps, Shawn ducks back in and throws the leaves on the floor, sinking down on the plywood with them.    
  
Cory picks up a leaf and examines it. "Which do you think we should use?"   
  
They're supposed to be bringing in leaves for a school project. Something about pressing them under wax paper or something.    
  
Shawn shrugs. "I don't care," he says. "It's a stupid assignment anyway. School's stupid. I might quit."   
  
"You can't!"   
  
"Why not?"    
  
Lots of kids do and they hang around the trailer park smoking and talking during the day. Shawn saw them once when he was home sick and that looked a lot better than school.   
  
"Because then I'll be alone and lonely."   
  
"You'll have Eric," Shawn points out.   
  
"But you're my best friend!"   
  
Cory's looking at him with puppy dog eyes, so Shawn says, "Okay, I won't quit yet. But the leaf thing's still dumb."   
  
"It's not dumb!" Cory grabs some of the leaves and throws them in the air. "It's fun. Leafs, leafs, leafy leafs!"   
  
Shawn rolls his eyes. "Leaves are boring. They're all the same. I don't get it."   
  
"Maybe here they are, but not everywhere," Cory says, tearing a leaf apart. "My mom loves leaves. She said my dad took her to Vermont to see the leaves change in the fall when they were, like, kids and it was really pretty."   
  
Shawn shrugs. "Maybe in Vermont, but not here. Vermont's far away."   
  
Shawn's not actually sure where Vermont is, but it's got to be far away since he's never heard anybody talk about it or seen any road signs.   
  
Cory reaches out and grabs Shawn's hand. "Hey, I have an idea. If you finish school, we'll go to Vermont together and see the leaves change."   
  
"Yeah? You'll take me?"   
  
Cory nods vigorously. "I promise," he says and Shawn knows it means something because Cory believes in promises. They're real with him even if they aren't with anyone else.   
  
"Okay. Promise."   
  
Shawn curls his hand around Cory's. Leaves might be lame, but a trip with Cory would be pretty fun.    
  
***   
  
The first time they kiss, it's fall and the sun is setting, dry brown leaves crackling under them as they bump awkwardly against each other.   
  
They'd been at the park playing basketball, one on one all afternoon. The park had been empty most of the time, the cool November weather scaring off most of the moms who would have otherwise been there with their children. After finishing a last round of basketball (Shawn had let Cory win because Cory always likes ending on a high note), they laid down in the grass, Shawn's outermost sweatshirt behind his head like a pillow.   
  
Now, as darkness nears, there isn't anyone around for what seemed like miles. They may be the last two boys on earth for all Shawn can tell.   
  
Cory throws the basketball up in the air and catches it. "My mom's probably looking for us," he says.   
  
Neither of them make a move to get up.   
  
Shawn likes how Cory says it. Us, like Mrs Matthews really does care if he eats dinner or not. It's not like anyone back at his place cares if he eats or what he eats or when he eats.

  
Cory throws the ball up again and on impulse Shawn grabs it, long arms stretching out faster than Cory's shorter ones can.   
  
"Hey!" Cory says, attempting to take it back.    
  
He turns toward Shawn and swings one leg over Shawn's and starts shimmying on top of him.   
  
At some point, the basketball falls away, rolling back towards the court and grappling for the ball turns into wrestling. Shawn, having the advantage of height, flips Cory over and pins him to the ground. Cory lets out a war cry and pushes up, Shawn growls and pushes down. Then, Cory starts laughing and leaning up and Shawn's laughing because if Cory's laughing he's laughing and then--   
  
And then they're kissing.   
  
***

  
Falls pass.   
  
Sometimes they kiss and sometimes they don't. Sometimes they spend afternoons and evenings sitting too close on the couch under a blanket. Sometimes, Cory rests his head on Shawn's shoulder and twins their hands together.   
  
Sometimes Cory dates Topanga and sometimes Shawn finds himself a girl to take out to Chubbie's on Saturday night. Sometimes, though, sometimes they spend Saturday nights lying on the floor of Cory's bedroom, Shawn's head on Cory's stomach, Cory's fingers running through his hair.   
  
Falls pass.   
  
***

Shawn graduates.    
  
He graduates a C student, a student who could have been better if he had put in an ounce of effort, but he graduates and a diploma is a diploma. He graduates, and he stands up, grinning, and listens as Topanga proposes to Cory and his heart plummets to his stomach.   
  
Later, he will tell Cory that he should do it, that he and Topnaga are perfect and special and all that shit, but for now Shawn's feeling like someone cut out his lungs and he's trying to breathe but there's nothing there.   
  
He excuses himself from the post-graduation picture taking and spends his last moments at John Adams High throwing up into a toilet in the first floor boys bathroom.

Shawn graduates, and there is no Vermont.   
  
***

Falls pass.    
  
They go to college together and leave college together. They go to New York City together and it lasts barely a year. This time, when Shawn leaves he does it alone, a duffel bag slung over his shoulder. He leaves his heart with Cory because it's always belonged to him anyway.   
  
Falls pass.   
  
***

Shawn goes to Vermont alone once.   
  
November is dying and with it, autumn. The leaves, the beautiful leaves they talked about as kids, are all off the trees, now probably decomposing on the wet ground. Left are spindly branches reaching for the sky, thin and barren and fragile.   
  
Shawn is twenty six and sometimes (more than just sometimes) he feels like one of those trees, an empty husk of a person, what's left when you strip away all that is good and all that is beautiful and leave only bones and sinewy tissue. When he was a child, Shawn remembers his health teacher telling him that humans can't live without a heart, but he has lived without his for five years now.   
  
But, maybe, that's the thing--he's not really living.   
  
He checks into a grungy Motel 6 with cigarette stained bedsheets and a cockroach crawling across the bathroom counter. In a fit of desperation to avoid the overwhelming silence of the empty room, he buys a six pack from the liquor store across the street and gets himself drunk.   
  
He ends up leaning against the cold tub, rubbing his finger against the mildewy floor and telling the cockroach about his life. About Cory, really, because Cory is somehow still his life.    
  
In the morning, he takes three ibuprofen dry and wanders through the forest. The place is so dense, so dark and dead that he half expects to find a body, some poor soul left to rot under the leaves. Thankfully, he doesn't, but he still can't shake the feeling that there's one just barely hidden from view.   
  
In a patchy clearing, Shawn comes upon a single tree with leaves still on it. Red and orange, a light amid all the brown. He takes two and brings them back to the hotel, lays them out on the comforter, next to the odd brown stain.   
  
When he gets back to civilization, he decides, he'll put them in wax paper.   
  
***   
The year Shawn is thirty five, he and Cory go to Vermont together.   
  
It's not how they planned half a lifetime ago. Once, it was going to be their thing, the two of them alone on the road, alone in the wilderness. Now, it's a joint family vacation with their wives and children.   
  
It's not what they planned, but doesn't mean it's not fun. They go hiking the first day. The trail is scenic, the quiet of the woods contemplative, and the company the best. On the second day, Topanga and Katy take Riley and Maya to a spa day in town, leaving Auggie with them.   
  
They take Auggie out to lunch, the three of them wedging themselves into a corner booth at the hotel's restaurant. Cory insists on paying and it doesn't occur to Shawn until then what this must look like to people, especially people in Vermont. Two men and a boy, one bill, a family weekend.   
  
Shawn hates that he likes the implication, hates the part deep inside him that wishes all that was true.   
  
On the way out, Auggie skipping ahead, the waitress murmurs, "You're son's so cute," to Shawn and Cory.   
  
There's a second that Shawn's sure Cory's about to correct her, about to say Auggie's _his_ son, that Shawn's just the fake uncle, but he doesn't. Instead, he smiles one of his goofy grins and thanks her.    
  
"We think he is too," he agrees.   
  
"Cor," Shawn whispers as they leave, conveying everything he can't put into words.   
  
"Shawnie," he whispers back and bumps their hands together, not entwined, but touching.   
  
On the third day, they wake up early and go for a walk, just the two of them. It's just that, a walk, nothing more, but certainly nothing less. The leaves are above them, a blanket of red, gold, and orange and Shawn thinks of Cory's parents, all those years ago, about him and Cory, eight years old in the tree house.   
  
"Do you--?" Shawn starts and doesn't even need to finish because Cory's already nodding, a wistful look on his face.   
  
"I'm sorry," Cory says, a whisper even though they're alone. 

Shawn starts to shake his head, but then Cory's stepping forward, enveloping him in a hug that's so tight Shawn feels like it'll never end. It's a hug. It's not a kiss, it's not a quick fuck in some dark room. It's a hug, but it's more intimate than either of those things.  
  
When they pull apart, Cory takes his hand and Shawn feels his face turn hot in a way it hasn't since he was eighteen. In a rush of ancient, ancestral feeling, he reaches up with his free hand to push back hair that's no longer there. Cory watches and smiles, bright and happy, and in it Shawn sees a glimpse of a child he knew once.  
  
They finish the walk hand-in-hand talking about everything and nothing. Riley and Maya's college applications, the bakery, the new season of the comedy they've been watching. It's light and easy, but there's a part of Shawn that wants to scream, to panic and run.  
  
He wonders, squeezing Cory's hand, if Topanaga knows. Katy doesn't, but how would she? She wasn't there for all those years, all those Philidelphia nights. But, Topanga, sometimes Shawn wonders if she knows or suspects or wonders. If she convinces herself it can't be true or if she remains in blissful ignorance.  
  
Shawn hates himself, sometimes, but his feelings for Cory are always stronger. They've always been stronger than everything else.  
  
Shawn can't help but think of him and Cory, twenty years ago, stealing kisses in the bathroom off Cory's room and holding hands while watching movies, but refusing to talk about it. He can't help but wonder where he'll be twenty years from now, whether they'll still be playing husbands to martyred wives, whether he'll be dead in a ditch somewhere, or whether they'll be just each other, just Shawn and Cory.  
  
 _Someday_ , Shawn promises to himself and to a teenage Cory who promised him a world he couldn't give, _someday we'll come here just you and me._

**Author's Note:**

> Okay guys the Vermont leaf thing is literally like so stereotypically romantic I don't even
> 
> Thank you for reading!! :))


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